- US House unveils “bipartisan” Internet censorship scheme
Source: The Hill
“House lawmakers announced a bipartisan deal on a package for protecting [sic] kids [sic] online on Monday, months after negotiations on digital and social media regulation fell apart between the two parties. … The KIDS (Kids Internet and Digital Safety) Act includes portions from the landmark Kids Online Safety Act, dubbed KOSA, which aims to hold social media companies accountable for the alleged harms their platforms cause for minors and young kids.” [editor’s note: Censors always screech that their proposed restrictions are “for the chilllllllllllldren,” but we know better, don’t we? – TLK] (06/22/26)
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5934266-bipartisan-deal-kids-online-protection
- Japan: Regime quintuples visa fees in first price hike since 1978
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“Japan has implemented a five-fold increase to visa fees for all foreigners, marking the first price hike in nearly 50 years. From 1 July, single-entry visa fees will be raised from the current 3,000 yen ($18.69; £14) to 15,000 yen, while multi-entry visas will now cost 30,000 yen, up from 6,000 yen. The visa fee revisions – the first since 1978 – were made to ‘reflect inflation and exchange rate fluctuations,’ Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters on Friday. ‘We do not anticipate that it will have an immediate impact on inbound tourism,’ he added. The Japanese yen has been weakening continually since 2021, and is now hovering near historic 40-year lows. This, along with a post-pandemic travel rebound, has led to a surge in tourists to Japan. The country welcomed a record 42.7m international tourists last year.” (06/22/26)
- UK: Lawyer Faces Up To Two Years In Prison For Cleaning Polluted River
Source: NDTV [India]
“A UK lawyer who led volunteers to clean up a heavily polluted river in East London is now being probed and could face a prison sentence for doing the cleanup without official permission, The Guardian reported. Paul Powlesland, who is an environmental campaigner, spent 10 days in late February organising a community effort on Alders Brook, a tributary of the River Roding in Barking. Alongside the River Roding Trust, volunteers removed around 200 bags of litter, silt, weeds, and branches from a 250-metre stretch that had reportedly become choked and stagnant. The media outlet suggested that the cleanup worked, as within days, locals reported fish, dragonflies, herons, and reed beds returning to the revived section. … Within a week of the cleanup, Environment Agency investigators visited the site and sent Powlesland a letter saying the group was under investigation for ‘unpermitted works’ in breach of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.” (06/22/26)
- OpenAI signs deal to show Getty’s images in ChatGPT results
Source: Engadget
“Getty Images has announced a multi-year partnership with OpenAI that will bring its licensed content libraries to the AI company. The agreement means Getty’s content will appear in OpenAI search and ChatGPT. … Getty, until recently, had taken a strong stance against working with AI companies. In September 2022, Getty banned all AI-generated art from its library. A few months later, it sued Stability AI, alleging copyright violations — a notion that was rejected late last year. A year after its AI-generated art ban, Getty announced its own generative AI tool, trained on its library and powered by NVIDIA’s Edigy AI model. Each of the resulting images came with a royalty-free license. But in October 2025, Getty signed a deal with Perplexity AI, allowing the latter’s AI search and discovery tools to access Getty’s library.” (06/22/26)
https://www.engadget.com/2198633/openai-signs-deal-with-getty-to-show-images-in-chatgpt-results/
- Qatar: At least 13 killed and dozens injured after gas explosion
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“At least 13 people have been killed and 66 injured after an explosion at Qatar’s largest gas facility. The city’s main liquified natural gas (LNG) processing site suffered ‘a technical accident’ in Ras Laffan industrial zone on Sunday night, the interior ministry said, with the city’s skyline turning orange because of the explosion. Qatar’s Energy Minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi said the explosion would not affect the country’s exports, adding ‘this was an accident and not sabotage or hostile in nature’. The Ras Laffan Port is the largest artificial harbour in the world and has the world’s largest LNG export facility. It was targeted by Iranian strikes earlier this year. The blast on Sunday rattled windows and was felt across central Doha, panicking residents more than 70km (43 miles) from Ras Laffan.” (06/22/26)
- Ireland: Former Head of Quisling Party found Guilty of Child Sex Offences
Source: US News & World Report
“The former leader of [British-occupied] Ireland’s largest [British quisling] party, Jeffrey Donaldson, was found guilty on Monday of historic child sex offences against two women when they were children in one of the highest-profile cases to be heard in the British-run region in recent times. A jury at Newry Crown Court found Donaldson guilty of one count of rape, 13 counts of indecent assault and four counts of gross indecency against two complainants at dates between 1985 and 2008. He denied all charges. … The jury found that Donaldson’s wife, Eleanor, aided and abetted her husband. She has also denied the charges. The court ruled her unfit to stand trial last month, due to mental health issues, meaning she could not face criminal conviction.” (06/22/26)
- The Demented Origin of the War on Drugs and War on Terrorism Nexus
Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard“If the U.S. government is entitled to summarily kill suspected drug traffickers abroad, there is no reason why the same prerogative would not eventually be invoked on the home front. If politicians truly want to protect Americans, why not authorize the U.S. military, state police, and county government dog catchers to summarily attack any boat suspected of transporting drugs on the nation’s lakes, rivers, or overgrown puddles? Actually, such warped logic has already been taken to absurd ends. The core follies of the Trump-Hegseth war of extermination on drug suspects were established almost a quarter-century ago. American illicit drug users miraculously became collectively guilty for every terrorist attack in the world.” (06/22/26)
- The United States of Underwriters
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders“It started in a London coffee house in the 1680s. Merchants and ship captains crowded the tables, and somewhere between the gossip and the gambling, they began betting on the things everyone else was afraid of. Hurricanes. Pirates. Ships lost at sea. Three hundred years later, the same place would ensure Bruce Springsteen’s voice and the legs of a Hollywood actress. It’s called Lloyd’s, and most people think it’s an insurance company. But it’s something stranger and far more interesting. Lloyd’s is a risk marketplace. And buried in how Lloyd’s works is a schematic for reinventing government itself.” (06/22/26)
https://underthrow.substack.com/p/the-united-states-of-underwriters
- Trump’s Attempt to End the Iran War Infuriates the Uniparty
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
by Ron Paul“President Trump started a war on Iran against all sober guidance and in violation of the US Constitution’s requirement that only Congress can declare war. There must be a reckoning for our elected leaders who violate their oath of office, the Constitution, and simple common sense. However, what is more telling is the reaction when President Trump finally took the correct move and attempted to end the war. The neocons who had hailed him as a great leader – Levin, Bolton, Pompeo, etc. – suddenly turned against him when he turned against further escalation of the war. Even Trump’s top funder, Miriam Adelson, attacked Trump in her newspaper Israel Hayom.” (06/22/26)
- Borrowed Time: The “Extend and Pretend” Economy Must End
Source: The Daily Economy
by Laura Williams“Trillions in hidden distress and deferred losses are emerging as borrowers run out of time and options. America’s debt reckoning has begun.” (06/22/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/borrowed-time-the-extend-and-pretend-economy-must-end/
- Americans Discovered How to End Poverty
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger“During my favorite period in history — around 1870 to 1910 — the standard of living of the American people skyrocketed. Suddenly, poor people were going from rags to riches in one, two, or three generations. In fact, some poor people were becoming multimillionaires. Real wages were soaring — and not because of inflation because there was no inflation. Multitudes of European immigrants were flooding into America to get in on the action. New inventions were coming into existence every day. The world had never seen anything like it. And everyone in the world marveled at what was happening. But why? Why the United States and not some long-established foreign country? The answer lies in what happened about a century before — in 1776, when two revolutionary concepts were introduced to the world — and then in 1788, when the U.S. Constitution was ratified.” (06/22/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/06/22/americans-discovered-how-to-end-poverty/
- The Conversion of JD Vance
Source: Free Press
by Robert P George“What makes J.D. Vance tick? Most Americans, whether or not they’ve read J.D. Vance’s 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, have some idea of his remarkable journey from poverty in Middletown, Ohio, to the vice presidency of the United States. In some ways it’s the Horatio Alger tale to beat all Horatio Alger tales. A gambler who knew James David Hamel (as he was then known) as a child would have given million to one odds against his attending Yale Law School, making a ton of money in tech investing, and then becoming a United States senator and vice president of the United States. But that’s exactly what he went on to do …. Another thing he managed to do before age 41: publish two memoirs. His second, released last week, is called Communion, and traces Vance’s decision, as an adult, to be received into the Catholic Church.” (06/21/26)
- Democrats want control of Congress, but what will they actually do with it?
Source: The Hill
by William S Becker“The possibility that Democrats will control the next Congress keeps improving, as the Republican majority capitulates to President Trump’s erratic and corrupt behavior. However, Democrats should be more transparent about what they would do with their power. So far, they seem to have followed Napoleon’s dictum, ‘Never interrupt an enemy when he’s making a mistake.’ It hasn’t won them much respect. More than 40 percent of voters are unhappy with both political parties. If Democrats intend to save democracy and civilized society, they will need control of the Senate as well as the House. They should make a stronger case than ‘We’re not Trump.'” (06/22/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5932081-restoring-faith-democracy-congress/
- Substantive Due Process Is Still Antidemocratic
Source: Law & Liberty
by Tal Fortgang“Overturning democratically enacted laws based on vague notions of liberty does not promote democracy.” (06/22/26)
https://lawliberty.org/substantive-due-process-is-still-antidemocratic/
- “Is There No England Now?”
Source: American Greatness
by Stephen Soukup“If news reports are accurate, by the time you read this, Keir Starmer may no longer be the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Depending on the source, he has either decided to resign or is seriously considering it. In any case, the events in Britain over the last few weeks—the murder, enabled by the police, of Henry Nowak by the Sikh Vickrum Digwa; the attempted beheading of a man in Belfast by a Muslim immigrant; the release of a report on the systematic and protracted rape of young women and girls by Muslim ‘grooming gangs;’ the subsequent (and understandable) renewal of unrest over largely unchecked immigration; and the government’s increased efforts to limit and control speech—have likely doomed Starmer and the Labour Party, making it impossible for them to maintain or regain the trust of the people. None of this should really surprise anyone.” (06/22/26)
- I, Chicken Sandwich
Source: Cato Institute
by Jeremy Lott“Andy George, star of the YouTube channel How to Make Everything, spent $1,500 over six months to make a chicken sandwich from scratch. And by ‘from scratch’ I mean growing vegetables, milling wheat, milking a cow, and slaughtering a chicken. The result was … not great. ‘It’s not bad. That’s about it: It’s not bad,’ he judged after taking a few bites of the sandwich. … George thought of his chicken sandwich as an experiment in self-reliant living. It was that, but he was also getting a crash course in global supply chains, price signals, and spontaneous order.” (for publication summer 2026)
https://www.cato.org/regulation/summer-2026/i-chicken-sandwich
- America Needs Fewer Performers and More Adults
Source: Town Hall
by Jay Rogers“Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire and meant it. He didn’t hedge, qualify, or wait for a focus group. He built the military, stationed Pershing missiles in Europe over fierce opposition, and helped accelerate the collapse of a system that had enslaved hundreds of millions. On American movie screens, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Sylvester Stallone played men who took responsibility, absorbed punishment, and didn’t apologize for their convictions. That wasn’t mere entertainment. It was a cultural argument, and it was winning. I arrived in California in 1990. The economy was thriving, the Republican Party was still competitive, and the state had a future worth arguing about. Thirty-five years of one-party rule later, California’s own Department of Finance confirms a net domestic loss of 216,000 residents in the year ending July 2025 alone — dead last in U-Haul’s outbound migration index for the sixth consecutive year.” (06/22/26)
- Rich Americans Pay a Higher Share of Taxes Than the Wealthy in Most Countries
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille“Like his progressive comrades, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has an ambitious big-government agenda he proposes to fund by forcing ‘rich’ people to pay their ‘fair share.’ While the word billionaires is often thrown around, smart people understand that wealth will have to be defined generously to pay for everything proposed, and that ‘fair share’ always means more. Even so, lots of Americans are on board with the idea of forcing people they consider rich to pay higher taxes. What they don’t understand, and what progressives won’t acknowledge, is that the U.S. already puts a heavier burden on high-income people than do most countries.” (06/22/26)
- True Spirituality Confronts The Abuses Of Empire
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“A spirituality that is uninterested in ending war, genocide, poverty and injustice is a dead spirituality. If you hold your time on the meditation cushion as something separate from the weeping mother clutching a small body in Lebanon, you’re wasting your time. Sometimes I get asked why I only occasionally write about ‘spiritual’ matters like awakening, egoic delusion, inner work etc, but from my point of view everything I write is about that stuff. To oppose the injustices and abuses of our world is to directly interface with the mechanisms of humanity’s struggle to become a conscious species. The overwhelming majority of what people call ‘spirituality’ in our society is really just glorified escapism. It’s about avoiding reality by focusing on good vibes, nice feelings, and comforting stories about the nature of the cosmos.” (06/22/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/06/22/true-spirituality-confronts-the-abuses-of-the-empire/
- Law professors say they support free speech. Many are afraid to practice it.
Source: Expression
by Nate Honeycutt“A libertarian law professor who responded to FIRE’s recent national survey of law faculty offered a striking admission: ‘Whether justified or unjustified, I regularly hide beliefs from colleagues who are openly discussing important topics in the public interest out of fear of retaliation, particularly as a junior faculty member.’ No administrator had disciplined him. No student had filed a complaint. Yet by his own admission, he and another colleague routinely conceal their views at faculty meetings and other public events, not because anyone ordered them to stay silent but because they worry that candor can carry professional costs. That kind of silence is tricky to measure, but carries serious implications. And new data suggest it is relatively common in American law schools.” (06/22/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/law-professors-say-they-support-free
- Good riddance to Keir Starmer’s tyranny of greyness
Source: spiked
by Brendan O’Neill“So he’s gone. Keir Starmer has resigned. The adults are out of the room. He waltzed into Downing St two years ago to the effusive gushing of the liberal commentariat, and now he’s slinking out. He and his slack-jawed media cheerleaders promised us an era of blissful if boring stability. What they gave us were riots, division, betrayal after betrayal, and an unprecedented assault on the ancient liberties of our nation. The lesson of the Starmer epoch? Never trust a technocrat.” (06/22/26)
- Reason Roundtable, 06/22/26
Source: Reason
“Why U.K. Socialism Could Soon Be America’s Problem.” (06/22/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/06/22/why-u-k-socialism-could-soon-be-americas-problem/
- What Then Must We Do?, 06/22/26
Source: What Then Must We Do?
“The Hows and Whys of Operating in the Private, with Common-Law Trust Solutions.” (06/22/26)
- AI Summer, 06/22/26
Source: AI Summer
“Robert Wright on the global implications of powerful AI.” (06/22/26)
https://www.aisummer.org/p/robert-wright-on-the-global-implications
- Zooming In, 06/22/26
Source: The UnPopulist
“Trump Has Not Turned Americans Against Immigrants: A Conversation with Greg Sargent.” (06/22/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trump-has-not-turned-americans-against
- Rising, 06/22/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave delivers his radar on his experiences in war-torn Ukraine, and what he believes is Russia’s ultimate goal with its more than four-year campaign in the country: Ignite a global war with the west.” (06/22/26)
- Loot & Lobby, 06/22/26
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
“Mises Editor-in-Chief Ryan McMaken explains how the new Fed chairman faces a political problem with rising prices and the fact the Fed keeps fueling the inflation fire.” (06/22/26)
https://mises.org/podcasts/loot-and-lobby/feds-inflation-problem